Hello

      Your other name The river, fat and glistening green, slithers through the city through the church yard, covered in windflowers Their petal confetti tore up winter so that spring arrived empty and unwritten with a naked, confessing light Only oval...

      Starlings Dusk, on a winter’s evening, overcast, cold, a stiff offshore wind blowing in from the Irish sea as people emerge from town streets, in twos or threes or solitary, to see this miracle. Small figures muffled to the ears all eyes as the...

      Of Change and Collaboration Here in the Valley The sun each day Rises over the mountains At a different time in a different place In the East, some say But others see each day is unique And, flexible, cobble a self to suit And so they grow and...

      Crisps with Robin Hood I almost missed him, with those camouflage trousers on. He was, naturally, in the woods. I had shorts. ‘Are you Robin Hood?’ I asked. He stared for a spell, then nodded. ‘Where’s Merlin?’ I said. ‘And Little Elton?’ He...

      Sunspot I watched her. Persephone. Sunflowers on her dungarees. Breathing in the blackened syrup. London air. She’s trying not to talk about it but she remembers. Winter. There’s Parsley on the windowsill. Planted in a little mug. The only spot in...

      Appearance and Apparition He pirouetted into the room, the lonely dancer With moon-blown hair. Along the way he brushed the sea Gathering it up like dust. Each morning seated on my porch I welcomed his unseen arrival A coffee in one hand a smile...

      Clematis My mother loved wild things like clematis, she had respect for anything that disregarded perimeters, to hell with the neighbours and their territorial claims. Maybe that’s more me than her. Oh, you’re a brat she’d say like clematis; an...

      To a Father I Never Knew Go on, be mostly unexamined. Excuse yourself from history.  Hang there on the periphery of consciousness. If you’re okay with that, then fine. But I rate you more important than you do yourself.  And I’ll legitimize you...

      Not Anywhere We did not rollerblade. We did not keep secrets. He was not still in love. I did not bring my telescope and did not know the names of stars. He did not pretend to like the sound of my book. We did not order these. The bones did not...

      Dust I have become my mother, always sweeping through the corners of our corners, her broom in search of imperfection to eviscerate. Life is so untidy, but she has found ways to be neat. She picks up all the scattered things left lying,...

      Familiar Tissue "My father is given to me and I dissect his body. I study him carefully. You ask me where I learn anatomy?" - Stanislaw Szukalski As every sinew, tendon, lies apart   I reflect that only, in these loving scrapes will he be at all...

      Lions in Translation We, at the International Lion Translation Centre, do not believe: If a lion could speak we would not understand him.   Through our outreach programme our dedicated team of translators, at considerable personal risk, have found...

    Paper Doll The woman practised control on paper dolls, renditions of perfection in children seen but not heard. She bound their chests in liberty bodices attached with tabs, displayed them in dioramas of salvaged boxes. She wished they had more...

      From The Jazz Age The man in the high castle In his elegant turret attic, Tycho Brahe turns the page, turns it back, then back again. No matter how closely he peers at the drawings, or how intently he attempts to recreate in his mind’s eye every...

      Dog In the dog days of this dog’s breakfast world, you remain dogged in your doggy ways; face licker, arse sniffer, purveyor of fetid breath, oblivious to squalor, fantastically lavish with  affection. Incapable of guile or guilt, your...

      A Slice of Sonnet Go out with your fishing-net, and sit by the brook, the brook which holds a whisper of moon. Tell them that you’re going out to catch some stray salmon. Then, they won’t smell a rat. Ensure that it isn’t the complete, full moon...

      (Untitled) just for now (and I doubt persistence) the rubble of my mind is whipped up draftily in a flurry quivers with new direction with something like optimism     Jack McGrath is a 23 year old writer living in Manchester. He tends to...

      Rest Assured You won’t be there tonight sagged upon the stool of an emptying bar the same corner where you and Frank used to sit as weekends blurred by. Nor will you stumble into a club after hours to mumble your age, name and how this isn’t your...